MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
Blue Funkel
MAYER WAKEFIELD witnesses a perceptive take on how class, wealth and power manifest themselves in contemporary relationships
Sabrina Wu as Nina
[Ali Wright] ![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
Graceland
Royal Court Upstairs
“HOW did I let this happen?” is the critical line in Ava Wong Davies’s one-woman play, Graceland.
British Chinese twenty-something Nina (Sabrina Wu) is blaming herself for getting caught in a web of underhand abuse at the hands of a morose, minted poet — who we eventually learn is called Gabriel. Initially disguised as a classic boy-meets-girl scenario, Davies’s steadily unravelling script is a perceptive take on how class, wealth and power manifest themselves in contemporary relationships.
The initial burning sensation of their romance is palpable as we travel with them through drunken dinner parties, frolics in the sea and first meetings with the parents – with a particularly enjoyable scene where they eat in her mum and dad’s restaurant and the class divisions begin to subtly emerge as he describes a childhood visit to Hong Kong.
More from this author
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s
MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to Urielle Klein-Mekongo about activism, musical inspiration and the black British experience
MAYER WAKEFIELD is swept up by the tale of the south London venue where music forged alliances across race, class and identity
MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
